Category: Easygenerator

The Pro Plan comes to the web.

2014 was a massive year for easygenerator, we have rapidly developed many features such as Co-Authoring, Course Reviews, 8 new question types, tracking and tracing results and custom languages. We have launched the Starter and Plus Plan for teachers and Subject Matter Experts, gathered tons of feedback which we took to heart and added to easygenerator and welcomed our 5000th user (we’re now well over 7000!)

So what’s in store for 2015?

Pro plan

In 2015 we will bring the Pro Plan to the web, the complete e-learning solution for instructional designers. I will breakdown the most important features below.

Custom templates
The Pro Plan allows you to edit the HTML, CSS and Javascript source of course content, this will allow you to adjust the look and feel and functionality of courses. You can even create your own templates to create a custom learning experience. We will share the source code of our own templates so you can alter them as you like. If you don’t have the technical knowledge for this you can also choose to have this done by one of our partners.

Result navigation
With result navigation you will be able to define navigation rules based on the result of the learner. Based on an answer given, an assessment result or progress on a learning objective you can navigate a user to a specific page or part of your course. This way you can offer them a personalized learning experience based on their needs.

User Interactions
With Easygenerator’s Pro Plan you will be able to create interactions on a page that can be triggered either by time or by user behaviour. Think of pop ups with extra context, video’s, links, audio, all triggered by time or behavior.

New and Redesigned templates
In 2015 we will add a reader template for courses that are read only and contain no questions.We will bring out a newly designed quiz template, with improved layout and user interaction based on user feedback.

Custom Languages
We already offer custom languages, but we will add more default translations to the templates, so all default elements will be in your own language. If we don’t have your language you will be able to translate all templates in the application yourself fast and easy. We will also expand the options to change the templates to your look and feel.

Question Pools and Assessments
We will add the option to create assessments in easygenerator, we call them ‘question pools’. You can run a whole question pool or draw any number of specific questions to present to your learner. We will also add options to the existing question types and add a few new ones like the open question and the video and sound question type.

Extra files
You will be able to upload and store not only images, but also video and sound files and we will make it possible to include a whole range of documents in your courses (like word and pdf the option to include html5 interactions. We will of course also offer extra content management facilities in order to manage these files. The content management will also include an option to reuse elements from courses, not only through copy and paste, but also by reusing them as elements in the content management part of easygenerator.

Voice Over

A much requested feature is to be able to have overs in courses, to guide the user to questions and pages.

Video Upload

Currently the way to add video’s in easygenerator is to embed them from third party video hosting sites like youtube and vimeo. In 2015 we will have our own video hosting to offer secure video content.

Energy shortage forces Ukrainian schools to close during winter period, Easygenerator provides its software for free!

Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 8 January 2015. – The Ukraine is going through tumultuous times; economic setbacks, war in the east and political instability. Schools and universities will be closed in the winter for a period of three months to save gas and money. Teachers are trying to teach from home, a challenging task given the lack of resources.

Easygenerator, a provider of eLearning authoring software, decided to make its software available free of charge to everybody in the Ukraine as of today. Easygenerator is closely connected to the Ukraine, it’s software development team of 17 developers is based in Zhytomyr (Ukraine). The software is available free of charge for a period of 3 months till the 1st of April. Easygenerator wants to make a contribution to the Ukraine and hopes to facilitate online learning for all Ukrainian teachers and students. “We strongly believe in supporting online learning globally. Given our special relationship with the Ukraine it is our pleasure to make a small contribution to the country in these challenging times”, says Kasper Spiro (CEO Easygenerator).

How does it work?

It’s easy, go to www.easygenerator.com and sign up. Your account will be automatically upgraded to a premium account if you are from the Ukraine till the 1st of April. The premium account allows users to create, design and publish courses. All accounts will be transferred into free accounts by April first, and all courses will remain available for the students!

About Easygenerator

Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. Easygenerator enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to rapidly create the most engaging courses that have the highest learning impact. Easygenerator is affordable, easy to use, and future proof. Simply create, design, publish courses, and track your learner’s results with Easygenerator. Used and loved by 8000+ users in more than 150 countries. Easygenerator’s headquarter is located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

There are more than 6000 easygenerator users in 144 countries. As a result, we’ve had frequent requests in the last few months to enable the translation of the default text in easygenerator.

I’m pleased to announce this functionality is now developed.

Now, in the Simple Course template, you can translate all default text elements from English to any language. This is how it works:

Open the course in easygenerator.

Go to the design tab

Choose the template “Simple course’. (For now, the Simple Course template is the only one enabled with the translation option, the other templates will follow.)

Scroll down and on the right side of the design tab you will find a table (interface language):

Click on a pencil in the column value and you can change the text.

Go to the top of the page and press the ‘apply’ button.

A short example

The default language is English. If, for example, I want to change it to Dutch, I just type in the Dutch translation. The second entry is ‘Start Course’. It will be shown in the introduction page of the course.

I type in the Dutch translation (Start cursus), press the apply button and run the course. The button is translated to Dutch. This means you can now translate the course template to any language..

Help us with translation and earn a free one-month subscription!

We are looking for easygenerator users who want to help us create default translations. If you translate the Simple template to your language, we will give you a free subscription to the Plus Edition. Since we only need each language once, we will award this to the first person who responds for each language. We already have English, Dutch, Ukrainian and Chinese (mandarin). All other languages are welcome!

The next step is to make this feature available for the other templates. Then, we will add several default languages from which you’ll be able to choose the language you want, and you won’t need to complete the translation.

Why every Easygenerator release is completely based on user feedback and data.

Easygenerator launched its cloud-based plans 10 months ago. While moving to the web was a milestone, we also changed how we develop the tool. We used to develop our roadmap based on industry trends and our intuitive, gut sense. But since we launched the web plans, we have put users behind the easygenerator steering wheel. This user-centric development approach has increased user engagement.

Let’s break down how we continually improve easygenerator every day using several different tools and apps. Read more »

DevLearn 2014 is fast approaching; in just less than three weeks it will start. our CEO Kasper Spiro will present two sessions at DevLearn. One concurrent session titled “Trends Leading to the End of the LMS” and one morning buzz session called “The Death of WYSIWYG Authoring?”

These titles make it seem that he is projecting doom for eLearning. But that’s not the case. What it means is that we, in elearning, are in a period of fundamental change. All changes offer new opportunities but also create a downside with victims. Kasper believes the LMS and WYSIWYG authoring will be the victims of some of these changes. Read more »

Introduction

Every 8 weeks, easygenerator updates its cloud based authoring tool with new functionality. This blog series will provide a short introduction of each of the functionalities with a video of the feature.

Content Items

In easygenerator you can add stand-alone content and information, but this should be done with caution. It is important to add only the necessary information to a course. However, in most cases, it’s better to add content directly to a question which ties to learning objectives.

Easygenerator: the next 12 months

Last week, after months of intense development and user testing we launched our new Plus Plan . The Plus Plan makes it very easy for teachers and subject matter experts to create engaging learning material quickly, without a learning curve. . The Plus Plan includes 5 new Question Types: (Drag and Drop Text, Drag and Drop Images, Single Select, Multiple Select and Fill in the blanks), Co-Authoring and an Adaptive Learning Template.

But there’s much more in the pipeline for the coming 12 months: easygenerator will roll out a new release every 8 weeks and add:

10 more question types

Collaboration options

More templates

Content pages

Scenario based eLearning

Custom Templates

So what can you expect from easygenerator over the next 12 months?

August – Starter Plan

The goal of this release is to complete our Starter Plan. In August you’ll be able to easily import PowerPoint presentations and quickly add pop quizzes and curated content to immediately asses if students understand the learning material.

Easygenerator will have:

Two new question types:

Multiple Choice Images

Text Matching

Two improved Question types:

Fill in the blanks

Drag and Drop Questions

Content Pages: Curate and Create context for your students

October – Growing the Plus Plan

In October the Plus Plan will get an update! Teachers and subject matter experts will be able to create instructionally sound eLearning with two new question types, a new type of course and extended media options:

Two new question types:

Hotspot question

Statement

Glossary

Scenario based courses

Video & Sound upload.

December – Plus Plan finalized

In December, teachers and subject matter experts will benefit the full potential of the Plus Plan. Co-authoring will be extremely easy and clear with, to do lists, checklists and email notifications for every author involved.

Expect the following features in December:

To Do and Checklists for Co-Authors

Email Notifications for Co-Authors

Question Type: Match images

Question Type: Drag and Drop image

Question Pool: Draw questions

Voice Over: Add Voiceovers to all content and questions

Point and Click Graphical Interface for Creating Scenario Based Courses

2015 – The year of Pro

The current pro version is for Windows only, but we are bringing easygenerator Pro to the Web as well. Instructional Designers will have all easygenerator features available:

14 question types

Create your own publishing templates,

Advanced content management features

EPub and CMI5 publication

Set languages for publication

Subscribe to our newsletter to be t notified when new features are added!

When you want to create a really bad learning experience, this is the way to do it:

Don’t think about your learners

Dump a body of information in a course as if it was a PowerPoint

Add a few images (has to look good)

Add a few questions (for scoring)

Upload it into your LMS

Everybody knows (or should know) that learning development starts with defining clear learning objectives. In the new web edition of easygenerator you can’t create any content or questions without creating a learning objective first. The idea is that we help people in this way to create better courses. Easygenerator is the only e-Learning authoring software that works this way. However there is a catch: If you create bad learning objectives, you will get equally bad courses. To solve this problem, easygenerator is developing an eLearning course that will instruct you on how to create great learning objectives. Additionally, easygenerator will build a tool within easygenerator that will support authors to develop proper learning objectives. But as a start I will write a series of post covering the foundation of instructional design. First step is of course Learning objectives and Blooms taxonomy.
Because this is of wider interest than the readers of this blog I decided to publish the article in the eLearningindustry.com. Click on the image below to read the complete article.

Easygenerator is a young, rapidly growing Internet business. Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. It enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to create learning materials with a high learning impact. The software is used by over 5,000 users in more than 120 countries, in corporations, not-for-profits, government agencies, and educational institutions.

What do we offer?
An exciting internship in a high growth company. You will be a critical part of the team with your own assigned tasks and responsibilities. You will be paid an internship salary and compensation for expenses. Easygenerator has its offices in Rotterdam and Utrecht.

What are you going to do?
As the marketing intern, you will be involved in various forms of marketing and communications, with a strong focus on online promotion. You will be responsible for executing the content strategy of easygenerator (blogs, press releases and social media). You will coordinate the creation of new articles, write new blog articles or press releases, and manage the social media accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook). Read more »

Today easygenerator launches the first web-based subscription plan of its eLearning authoring tool. The easygenerator Starter Plan is available for $19 (15 Euro) a month per user. The new Starter Plan offers an eLearning alternative to PowerPoint. Easygenerator CEO Kasper Spiro explains:

“PowerPoint was never designed for eLearning. We have all experienced “death by PowerPoint” presentations. More importantly, learning retention from PowerPoint is low. Easygenerator Starter Plan allows authors to create measurable, personalized and high quality eLearning courses at a fraction of the typical cost. Best of all, no technical or instructional design skills are needed .

The Starter Plan comes with many new features that simplify eLearning design to help authors create high quality, and engaging learning experiences for learners. The new enhancements are detailed in the sections below.

Compatibility with Learning Management Systems (LMS)

The new version allows authors to publish responsive courses on the web (using Tin Can for tracking and tracing), and to any LMS using the SCORM 1.2 export.

Image Library

External Review

One of the most used features of easygenerator’s Windows Edition – the external review – has also been incorporated in the Web Edition. The external review feature allows authors to invite anyone to review courses without the need for additional licenses. The process is simple and user-friendly. The course author invites a reviewer via e-mail with a link to the course. A reviewer accesses the course using any browser to open a fully functional course that includes a “comments page” for each page in the course. Reviewers add comments directly in the authoring environment, so changes can be easily made based on the feedback given.

Templates

In managing and designing courses authors can set the order of learning objectives and questions. Also, using templates for a quiz or a simple course makes it even easier to create interactive personalized eLearning courses with assessments. And, the preview function allows authors to see the course before publishing it, as it will look to the learner.

The Starter Edition is an extension of the Free Web Edition, launched by easygenerator in October 2013. Based on user feedback, many improvements have been made in addition to new and improved features. These improvements have also been made to the free edition.

The launch of the web-based Starter Edition is the first milestone in rolling out easygenerator’s complete suite of authoring tools for the web. A new Plus Edition, targeting instructional designers is planned for release this summer, bringing easygenerator’s full authoring capabilities to the web.

Easygenerator is driven by constant improvement. The next update of the Starter Edition is planned for April 1st 2014.